29.08.2016

Pierre writes: It is a pleasure & an honor for Nomadics blog to publish BAALBECK, a sequence of poems by Etel Adnan translated by Sarah Riggs over the next 4 or 5 days. Below, the opening sections of the poem & a note by Etel Adnan concerning the circumstances of the work.

Etel Adnan & Sarah Riggs by Simone Fattal

Last year (2015) there was in Aix en Provence and in Baalbek itself an event concerning the Baalbek festival of pre-war Lebanon. A few poets were asked to write for the occasion. The roman-era ruins of that place in the Bekaa Valley which is a high plateau of some 1200 meters highth (more at its Northern end) are extraordinary and I was taken there first when I was 9 years old, and then often, and it made an impression still with me (it became the seat of a festival from about 1955 and on until the civil war interrupted it … it’s coming back and hopefully will be as remarkable. — Etel Adnan

B A A L B E C K

Etel Adnan

translated by Sarah Riggs with Etel Adnan

1.

From Orpheus to Mayakovskythe sun turned aroundmy headits mass of goldand of light,

first divinityto have visited me– and for surethe last –for which templesof stonehave risen

It’s among monolithsand columnsthat I understood,as a child,that my kingdom would bemade of these rocksand of their night.

2.

A dryness settledmy throat,

I am not going tosing.

A temple existed forreal,its stairs are solid

the gods, not willingto leave,danced,then decided to die…

leaving behind,even if barbaric,a sun which we haveloved.

In the sealed obscurityof the brainplants growand fish swim,while we believeseeinglandscapes, and lookingat thesea.

We will not know iflife is reversible,but in pain is writtena joy which hurts evenmore,

as in the desertification of heartsmemory’s fingerprintis found.

3.

Around hererain is madeneitherof water,nor of angels.

The fields showthe color ofblood

but the sky is closed

the youthof the single blade ofgrass trying to splitthis wallkeeps vibrations ofOrpheus,he, mirror of mysoul.

4.

With bare handsI knocked on mobileforces,arrived at somelikenesses of shades,all substance havingfled

we livein wavesand wind

Following the gods,we have abandonedan earthheavierthan bunches of grapeslike we close theeyelids of the dead.

5

The sea isfar away,an horizon offever agitatedin its sleep

by the dream of itsown splendor.

It’s not therewhere I am.

The seasonscontemplate the light’sconfusion in the aridzones of ourthoughts

Key conclusion of Anthropocene Working Group report to Geological Congress: the ‘Great Acceleration’ in the second half of the 20th century marked the end of the Holocene and the beginning of a new geological epoch.

by Ian Angus

The evidence is overwhelming: earth entered a new geological epoch in about 1950. In an official report to the International Geological Congress, the Anthropocene Working Group made that case, and proposed to move towards official adoption in the next 2-3 years.

Colin Waters, secretary of the AWG, told the press:

“Being able to pinpoint an interval of time is saying something about how we have had an incredible impact on the environment of our planet. The concept of the Anthropocene manages to pull all these ideas of environmental change together.”

All but one of the AWG’s 35 members agree that the Anthropocene is “stratigraphically real” (one abstained) and 30 agree (2 opposed, 3 abstentions) that the new epoch should be formally added to the Geological Time Scale.If approved, the Anthropocene would become the newest epoch in the Quaternary Period.

The AWG will now shift its focus to identifying a global “signal” that coincides with the change. Ten of the AWG’s members favor using plutonium fallout from nuclear tests as the signal, but there are many other possibilities. Once a signal is agreed on, they will determine a “golden spike” ( properly, a “Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point”) — an actual location in rock, sediment or ice strata, somewhere on earth, that would physically define the onset of the new epoch.

Once the AWG has agreed, it will initiate a formal approval process, which requires 60% approval by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences before the Anthropocene is added to the Geological Time Scale.

Formal approval is not automatic — the ICS and the IUGS are conservative bodies and can take years to act —but there is now no doubt that the Anthropocene is real and it is here to stay.

The following summary was released just before Dr. Colin Waters of the British Geological Survey began presenting the AWG’s report to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, on Monday, August 29.

ANTHROPOCENE WORKING GROUP REPORTS TO IGG

Majority current opinion on the group indicates the following:

The Anthropocene concept, as articulated by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, is geologically real. The phenomenon is of sufficient scale to be considered as part of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, more commonly known as the Geological Time Scale.

Majority AWG opinion is for assignation as an Epoch/Series. This option is preferred over either a lower rank (e.g. Age/Stage, i.e. as a subdivision of the Holocene) or a higher rank such as a Period or Era. In such a step, and in common with all other geological time units, the Anthropocene would comprise both a ‘pure time’ unit (an Anthropocene Epoch) and an equivalent unit of strata (an Anthropocene Series).

If the Anthropocene is adopted as an Epoch, this would mean that the Holocene has terminated, but that we remain within the Quaternary Period and Cenozoic Era.

Human impact has left discernible traces on the stratigraphic record for thousands of years – indeed, since before the beginning of the Holocene. However, substantial and approximately globally synchronous changes to the Earth System most clearly intensified in the ‘Great Acceleration of the mid-20th century. The mid-20th century also coincides with the clearest and most distinctive array of signals imprinted upon recently deposited strata.

Hence, the mid-20th century represents the optimal beginning of a potential Anthropocene Epoch (and, simultaneously, the base of the Anthropocene Series).

Changes to the Earth System that characterize the potential Anthropocene Epoch include marked acceleration to rates of erosion and sedimentation, large-scale chemical perturbations to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements, the inception of significant change to global climate and sea level, and biotic changes such as unprecedented levels of species invasions across the Earth. Many of these changes are geologically long-lasting, and some are effectively irreversible.

These and related processes have left an array of signals in recent strata, including plastic, aluminium and concrete particles, artificial radionuclides, changes to carbon and nitrogen isotope patterns, fly ash particles, and a variety of fossilizable biological remains. Many of these signals will leave a permanent record in the Earth’s strata.

The Anthropocene beginning might conceivably be defined by a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA), i.e. a numerical age that can be expressed as a calendar date such as 1945. Or more, conventionally it could be defined by a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), which is more colloquially a ‘golden spike’, and is a physical reference point in strata at one carefully selected place. Majority opinion on the AWG is to seek and choose a candidate GSSP, as this is the most familiar and widely accepted method of defining geological time units.

The AWG has already begun the process of identification of potential GSSPs, by initial analysis of the general environments in which the best combinations of stratigraphic signals may be found (e.g. undisturbed lake or marine sediments, annually banded coral skeletons, polar snow/ice layers, speleothems and so on).

This will lead to selection of sites for sampling and further analysis, to provide full descriptions of relevant signals in the strata, a process that we hope will lead to the identification of one or more suitable candidate sites for a GSSP. We would hope to complete this process over the next 2-3 years.

This would then form the basis for the preparation of a formal proposal, to our immediate parent body, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), on defining a formal Anthropocene unit. If the SQS recommends this by supermajority vote, the proposal will go on to its parent body, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to be voted on, with any vote in favour still needing to be ratified by the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

If all of these conditions can be fulfilled, then the Anthropocene would become a formal part of the Geological Time Scale.

When Donald Trump claimed, "the election's going to be rigged," he wasn't entirely wrong. But the threat was not, as Trump warned, from Americans committing the crime of "voting many, many times." What's far more likely to undermine democracy in November is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of battling voter fraud. The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.

The data is processed through a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which is being promoted by a powerful Republican operative, and its lists of potential duplicate voters are kept confidential. But Rolling Stone obtained a portion of the list and the names of 1 million targeted voters. According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters – with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.

Like all weapons of vote suppression, Crosscheck is a response to the imaginary menace of mass voter fraud. In the mid-2000s, after the Florida-recount debacle, the Bush administration launched a five-year investigation into the allegedly rampant crime but found scant evidence of wrongdoing. Still, the GOP has perpetuated the myth in every national election since. Recently, North Carolina Board of Elections chief Kim Strach testified to her legislature that 35,750 voters are "registered in North Carolina and another state and voted in both in the 2012 general election." Yet despite hiring an ex-FBI agent to lead the hunt, the state has charged exactly zero double voters from the Crosscheck list. Nevertheless, tens of thousands face the loss of their ability to vote – all for the sake of preventing a crime that rarely happens. So far, Crosscheck has tagged an astonishing 7.2 million suspects, yet we found no more than four perpetrators who have been charged with double voting or deliberate double registration.

On its surface, Crosscheck seems quite reasonable. Twenty-eight participating states share their voter lists and, in the name of dispassionate, race-blind Big Data, seek to ensure the rolls are up to date. To make sure the system finds suspect voters, Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.

In reality, however, there have been signs that the program doesn't operate as advertised. Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."

In our effort to report on the program, we contacted every state for their Crosscheck list. But because voting twice is a felony, state after state told us their lists of suspects were part of a criminal investigation and, as such, confidential. Then we got a break. A clerk in Virginia sent us its Crosscheck list of suspects, which a letter from the state later said was done "in error."

The Virginia list was a revelation. In all, 342,556 names were listed as apparently registered to vote in both Virginia and another state as of January 2014. Thirteen percent of the people on the Crosscheck list, already flagged as inactive voters, were almost immediately removed, meaning a stunning 41,637 names were "canceled" from voter rolls, most of them just before Election Day.

We were able to obtain more lists – Georgia and Washington state, the total number of voters adding up to more than 1 million matches – and Crosscheck's results seemed at best deeply flawed. We found that one-fourth of the names on the list actually lacked a middle-name match. The system can also mistakenly identify fathers and sons as the same voter, ignoring designations of Jr. and Sr. A whole lot of people named "James Brown" are suspected of voting or registering twice, 357 of them in Georgia alone. But according to Crosscheck, James Willie Brown is supposed to be the same voter as James Arthur Brown. James Clifford Brown is allegedly the same voter as James Lynn Brown.

And those promised birth dates and Social Security numbers? The Crosscheck instruction manual says that "Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match" – which leaves a crucial step in the identification process up to the states. Social Security numbers weren't even included in the state lists we obtained.

We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

Swedlund's statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian.

This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on the list. Was the program designed to target voters of color? "I'm a data guy," Swedlund says. "I can't tell you what the intent was. I can only tell you what the outcome is. And the outcome is discriminatory against minorities."

Every voter that the state marks as a legitimate match receives a postcard that is colorless and covered with minuscule text. The voter must verify his or her address and mail it back to their secretary of state. Fail to return the postcard and the process of taking your name off the voter rolls begins.

This postcard game amplifies Crosscheck's built-in racial bias. According to the Census Bureau, white voters are 21 percent more likely than blacks or Hispanics to respond to their official requests; homeowners are 32 percent more likely to respond than renters; and the young are 74 percent less likely than the old to respond. Those on the move – students and the poor, who often shift apartments while hunting for work – will likely not get the mail in the first place.

At this point, there's no way to know how each state plans to move forward. If Virginia's 13 percent is any indication, almost 1 million Americans will have their right to vote challenged. Our analysis suggests that winding up on the Crosscheck list is hardly proof that an individual is registered in more than one state. Based on the data, the program – whether by design or misapplication – could save the GOP from impending electoral annihilation. And not surprisingly, almost all Crosscheck states are Republican-controlled.

The man behind crosscheck is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Yale-educated former law professor. After 9/11, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft tasked Kobach with creating a system to track foreign travelers. (It was later shut down over concerns about racial profiling.) He is best known as the author of Arizona's "Driving While Brown Law," which allowed cops to pull over drivers and ask for proof of their legal status. He co-wrote the ultraconservative 2016 RNC party platform, working in a recommendation that Crosscheck be adopted by every state in the Union. He's also the Trump adviser who came up with a proposal to force Mexico into paying for Trump's wall.

In January 2013, Kobach addressed a gathering of the National Association of State Election Directors about combating an epidemic of ballot-stuffing across the country. He announced that Crosscheck had already uncovered 697,537 "potential duplicate voters" in 15 states, and that the state of Kansas was prepared to cover the cost of compiling a nationwide list. That was enough to persuade 13 more states to hand over their voter files to Kobach's office.

In battleground-state Ohio, Republican Secretary of State John Husted's Crosscheck has flagged close to half a million voters. In Dayton, we tracked down several of the suspects on our lists. Hot spots of "potential duplicate" voters, we couldn't help but notice, were in neighborhoods where the streets are pocked with rundown houses and boarded storefronts. On Otterbein Avenue, I met Donald Webster, who, like most in his neighborhood, is African-American.

Crosscheck lists him registered in Ohio as Donald Alexander Webster Jr., while registered a second time as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville, Virginia. Webster says he's never been a "Eugene" and has never been to Charlottesville. I explained that both he and his Virginia doppelgänger were subject to losing their ability to vote.

"How low can they go?" he asked. "I mean, how can they do that?"

I put his question to Robert Fitrakis, a voting-rights attorney who examined our Crosscheck data. I showed him Donald Webster's listing – and page after page of Ohio voters. Fitrakis says that the Ohio secretary of state's enthusiasm for Crosscheck fits a pattern: "He doesn't want to match middle names, because he doesn't want real matches. They're targeting people with clearly defined ethnic names that typically vote for the Democratic Party. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how – by taking away the rights of citizens to vote."

Kobach refused to speak for this story. So I went to Newton, Kansas, where he was headlining an ice-cream-social fundraiser in a public park. I approached Kobach with the Crosscheck list he had refused me, and asked, "Why are these lists so secret?"

I pointed to a random match on the Crosscheck list and asked him why it identified James Evans Johnson as the same voter as James P. Johnson.

Kobach denied the name could be on the list. "Our system would not yield this match," he said. (And according to the rules of his program, it shouldn't have.)

"This is the list you gave [Virginia], and they knocked off 41,000 voters," I said.

"That is false!" he said, as he hurried away. "You know why? Federal law prohibits that."

Kobach is correct that federal regulation typically would complicate such a sweeping purge, but somehow tens of thousands of voters in Virginia got knocked off the rolls anyway.

Kobach's Crosscheck purge machinery was in operation well before Trump arrived on the political scene – and will continue for elections to come. Low voter turnout of any kind traditionally favors the GOP, and this is the party's long game to keep the rolls free of young people, minorities and the poor. Santiago Juarez of New Mexico, an attorney who has done work for the League of United Latin American Citizens, has spent years signing up Hispanic voters in the face of systemic efforts to suppress their vote. He scoffed at the idea of a massive conspiracy among Latinos to vote in two states. "Hell," he said, "you can't get people to vote once, let alone twice."

21.08.2016

19.08.2016

Some days at MOAS [ Migrant Offshore Aid Station] are harder than others for our office team, our crew and all our supporters. Yesterday was one such day. Following the release of the heartbreaking footage of Omran Daqneesh sitting shocked and dazed in an ambulance in Syria, with the world crying out for justice and compassion, the MOAS team and its partners at sea were faced with yet another devastating demonstration of the effects of this heartbreaking conflict. Having survived the horrors of Syria and fled with their children on an exhausting journey in search of safety and security, 8 Syrian families were crammed together on a small wooden boat that left the coast of Libya in the early hours of Thursday morning. When their boat capsized and all were thrown overboard, they could only desperately try to hold the children above water, grasp on to one another and wait for help as they drifted apart. Some of the 27 who had originally been on board were rescued by search and rescue NGO Proactiva Open Arms, still others by a nearby fisherman, and eventually 21 survivors were transferred onto the MOAS vessel Responder to begin their journey North. Meanwhile the MOAS ship Phoenix was headed to an incident in another area when it began to come across the bodies of casualties floating in the water. Throughout the morning the Phoenix crew recovered the bodies of two women, a man and an 8-month old baby girl, while the body of a five year old girl was transferred over to them by yet another fisherman who came across her in the water. The search for the last remaining passenger from that boat of 27, a 5-year-old boy, was futile; he has still not been found despite exhaustive searches that went on all day. Following the public outcry after Aylan Kurdi, when voices shouted “never again”, we are still seeing hundreds of children drown each year, heroic survivors of conflict, poverty, violence and oppression, as their families desperately reach toward a safe space to raise them. “It is very sad and frustrating to witness the tragic loss of life at sea, especially that of such a young child. It is time for the international community to come to terms with this reality and to implement safe and legal solutions for the most vulnerable among us to avail themselves of the rights and protections they are entitled to”, said Regina Catrambone, MOAS co-founder. Since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, it is estimated that over 50,000 children have already lost their lives. According to UNHCR, between January and June 2016, children constituted an average of 27% of all migrant arrivals in Europe. Tonight, almost a year on from Aylan, as the footage of Omran permeates the internet, the 21 survivors and 5 latest casualties of the Mediterranean crossing head toward Sicily to disembark.

Tears in my eyes at this idea of being waste! I’m whining, ready to pray, but just can't make myself.

A moment later I'm clenching and unclenching my teeth, and drowsiness sets in.

A toothache strikes, my brain turns to mush.

I'm writing and appealing - but hoping for relief from the pain makes me feel that much worse.

Knowing nothing about the creature I am or what kind of thing I am - is there anything I do know? At night not being able to go on and banging my head against the wall, trying to find a way, not from self-confidence but because of being sentenced to search, bumping into things, bleeding, falling down, not getting up . . . Feeling I can’t go on, aware of pincers torturing my fingers, of red-hot branding irons burning the soles of my feet. Where is the way out, except for pincers and branding irons! No compromise and no escape. In actuality I’m safe from them?! At least they’d confer legitimacy on my body. Which can’t in truth be separated from them. Which can't be separated from them in truth. (You can't separate the body from the head either.)

What if this urgent pain finally didn't matter? At least I'd have some hope of rest. Thinking stops for me, I'm in sunlight, no more worry. How is it possible that earlier I had moments of total well-being on the banks of rivers, in woods, gardens, cafes, in my room? (Leaving aside the darker joys.)

A slipping, glance down, the molar's extracted, but the anaesthetic isn't working? What an awful experience!

What would it be like, how big a coward would I have been, without the hope the cocaine gave? When I get home, I bleed profusely. I stick my tongue in the hole . . . there’s a piece of meat there, a blood clot getting larger, starting to protrude. I spit it out - another follows. The clots have the consistency of snot, taste like food gone bad. They’re plugging up my mouth. I decide that by falling asleep I’ll get over my disgust, won’t be tempted to fuss with them or spit them out. I drift off and wake up at the end of an hour . . . Blood streamed from my mouth in my sleep, stained the pillow and sheet, and there are clots stuck in the sheet-folds, almost dry, some black like snot. I'm still upset and exhausted. I'm picturing an incident of haemophilia, maybe followed by death (is that so impossible?). I don’t want to die. Or maybe what I mean is - to hell with death. My disgust grows. I put a basin at the foot of the bed to avoid getting up during the night to spit in the toilet. In the coal stove, the fire’s gone out and the thought of having to start it again depresses me. I can’t get back to sleep . . . Time drags on. Sometimes I get drowsy. At 5 or 6 in the morning I decide to light the fire. I might as well make some use of this insomnia and get a thankless job out of the way. The ashes from the stove have to be taken out. I do the job badly, and soon the room’s strewn with pieces of coal, clinkers and ashes. The enamel basin is filled with blood, it’s dirty with it, and with clots, the blood has made puddles on my filthy sheets. Exhausted by insomnia, I’m still bleeding and the snotty taste of the clots gets more and more disgusting all the time. Finally the fire catches. My hands black with coal and dirty with blood. Blood-caked lips. A thick coal smoke fills the room; as usual, it takes a huge effort to get the resistant coal to catch fire. I'm not impatient, and no more anguished than other days. There's a nagging need in me . . . to rest.

[...]

Now, I don’t want to reduce Bataille, who was a complicated man. Nevertheless, as soon as I read ‘Without your pain, you're nothing!’ and these few paragraphs, a great deal fell into place. I could finally feel him as a fellow human. How many of us say on some level, ‘Without your pain, you're nothing!’ Judging by behavior, I’d guess the vast vast vast majority. I include myself, which should be needless to say.

[Note: I found this in The Bataille Reader, eds. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson, which includes this note: “The text is taken from the ‘Games of chance’ chapter of Guilty, tr. Bruce Boone (The Lapis Press, San Francisco, CA, 1988), pp. 69-86. Originally published in French by Editions Gallimard in 1944 as ‘Coupable’, the manuscript was produced between 1939 and 1944. Re-edited, it appeared in 1961 as the second volume to the Somme atheologique. See Georges Bataille: Oeuvres completes, V (Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1973), pp. 310-29. [...]”]

04.08.2016

Announcing State of the Climate in 2015, the NOAA listed these “notable findings” about 2015 —

Greenhouse gases were the highest on record. Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, rose to new record high values during 2015. The 2015 average global CO2 concentration was 399.4 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.2 ppm compared with 2014.

Global surface temperature was the highest on record. Aided by the strong El Niño, the 2015 annual global surface temperature was 0.76–0.83 degrees F (0.42°–0.46°C) above the 1981–2010 average, surpassing the previous record set in 2014.

Global upper ocean heat content highest on record. Upper ocean heat content exceeded the record set in 2014, reflecting the continuing accumulation of heat in the ocean’s top layers.

Global sea level rose to a new record high in 2015. It measured about 2.75 inches (70 mm) higher than that observed in 1993, when satellite record-keeping for global sea level rise began.

Tropical cyclones were well above average, overall. There were 101 tropical cyclones total across all ocean basins in 2015, well above the 1981-2010 average of 82 storms. The eastern/central Pacific had 26 named storms, the most since 1992. The North Atlantic, in contrast, had fewer storms than most years during the last two decades.

The Arctic continued to warm; sea ice extent remained low. The Arctic land surface temperature in 2015 was 2.2 degrees F (1.2°C) above the 1981-2010 average, tying 2007 and 2011 as the highest on record. The maximum Arctic sea ice extent reached in February 2015 was the smallest in the 37-year satellite record, while the minimum sea ice extent that September was the fourth lowest on record.

Abstract

The authors of the report prepared this summary:

In 2015, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—all continued to reach new high levels. At Mauna Loa, Hawaii, the annual CO2 concentration increased by a record 3.1 ppm, exceeding 400 ppm for the first time on record. The 2015 global CO2 average neared this threshold, at 399.4 ppm. Additionally, one of the strongest El Niño events since at least 1950 developed in spring 2015 and continued to evolve through the year. The phenomenon was far-reaching, impacting many regions across the globe and affecting most aspects of the climate system.

Owing to the combination of El Niño and a long-term upward trend, Earth observed record warmth for the second consecutive year, with the 2015 annual global surface temperature surpassing the previous record by more than 0.1°C and exceeding the average for the mid- to late 19th century—commonly considered representative of preindustrial conditions—by more than 1°C for the first time. Above Earth’s surface, lower troposphere temperatures were near-record high.

Across land surfaces, record to near-record warmth was reported across every inhabited continent. Twelve countries, including Russia and China, reported record high annual temperatures. In June, one of the most severe heat waves since 1980 affected Karachi, Pakistan, claiming over 1000 lives. On 27 October, Vredendal, South Africa, reached 48.4°C, a new global high temperature record for this month.

In the Arctic, the 2015 land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying 2007 and 2011 for the highest annual temperature and representing a 2.8°C increase since the record began in 1900. Increasing temperatures have led to decreasing Arctic sea ice extent and thickness. On 25 February 2015, the lowest maximum sea ice extent in the 37-year satellite record was observed, 7% below the 1981–2010 average. Mean sea surface temperatures across the Arctic Ocean during August in ice-free regions, representative of Arctic Ocean summer anomalies, ranged from ~0°C to 8°C above average.

As a consequence of sea ice retreat and warming oceans, vast walrus herds in the Pacific Arctic are hauling out on land rather than on sea ice, raising concern about the energetics of females and young animals. Increasing temperatures in the Barents Sea are linked to a community-wide shift in fish populations: boreal communities are now farther north, and long-standing Arctic species have been almost pushed out of the area.

Above average sea surface temperatures are not confined to the Arctic. Sea surface temperature for 2015 was record high at the global scale; however, the North Atlantic southeast of Greenland remained colder than average and colder than 2014. Global annual ocean heat content and mean sea level also reached new record highs. The Greenland Ice Sheet, with the capacity to contribute ~7 m to sea level rise, experienced melting over more than 50% of its surface for the first time since the record melt of 2012.

Other aspects of the cryosphere were remarkable. Alpine glacier retreat continued, and preliminary data indicate that 2015 is the 36th consecutive year of negative annual mass balance. Across the Northern Hemisphere, late-spring snow cover extent continued its trend of decline, with June the second lowest in the 49-year satellite record. Below the surface, record high temperatures at 20-m depth were measured at all permafrost observatories on the North Slope of Alaska, increasing by up to 0.66°C decade–1 since 2000.

In the Antarctic, surface pressure and temperatures were lower than the 1981–2010 average for most of the year, consistent with the primarily positive southern annular mode, which saw a record high index value of +4.92 in February. Antarctic sea ice extent and area had large intra-annual variability, with a shift from record high levels in May to record low levels in August. Springtime ozone depletion resulted in one of the largest and most persistent Antarctic ozone holes observed since the 1990s.

Closer to the equator, 101 named tropical storms were observed in 2015, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. The eastern/central Pacific had 26 named storms, the most since 1992. The western north Pacific and north and south Indian Ocean basins also saw high activity. Globally, eight tropical cyclones reached the Saffir–Simpson Category 5 intensity level.

Overlaying a general increase in the hydrologic cycle, the strong El Niño enhanced precipitation variability around the world. An above-normal rainy season led to major floods in Paraguay, Bolivia, and southern Brazil.

In May, the United States recorded its all-time wettest month in its 121-year national record. Denmark and Norway reported their second and third wettest year on record, respectively, but globally soil moisture was below average, terrestrial groundwater storage was the lowest in the 14-year record, and areas in “severe” drought rose from 8% in 2014 to 14% in 2015.

Drought conditions prevailed across many Caribbean island nations, Colombia, Venezuela, and northeast Brazil for most of the year. Several South Pacific countries also experienced drought. Lack of rainfall across Ethiopia led to its worst drought in decades and affected millions of people, while prolonged drought in South Africa severely affected agricultural production.

Indian summer monsoon rainfall was just 86% of average. Extremely dry conditions in Indonesia resulted in intense and widespread fires during August–November that produced abundant carbonaceous aerosols, carbon monoxide, and ozone. Overall, emissions from tropical Asian biomass burning in 2015 were almost three times the 2001–14 average.